Page:Proofs of the Enquiry into Homer's Life and Writings.pdf/98

Rh Homer'j Life and Writings,

85

Of dire Busiris, and his Altars stained With Strangers Blood?—• Virgil.

Sect. XI.

Human Sacrifices, an impious inhuman Rite, were not entirely abolished in Greece at the Time of the Trojan War ; as appears from the well known Story of Iphigenia sacrificed by her own Father, and the Fiction of Sinon's being destined by the Greeks as a Propitiation to the Gods, to procure a favourable Return. Horace will not allow that Agamemnon was in his Wits, when he committed that religious Crime : Tou, when your darling Daughter for a Calf Tou to the Altar brought, and her fair Head Besprinkled, Victim-like, with the Salt Cake ; Then were you in your Wits ?—

,g) ' 264. (f )

Yet a Shadow of this horrid Rite remained still in Rome. It was upon the Ides of May, a little after the Vernal Equinox, that those who are called Pontifices, the most eminent among the Priests, and with them the Virgin-Guardians of the eternal Fire, accompanied with the Pretors and greatest Citizens, made a Bridge over the Tiber (from which Bridge the Pontifices have their Name) and in a solemn manner cast thirty human Effigies into the Stream, calling them by ancient Tradition Akgi ves. Dionys. Book 1.

It

ibid- (t) 264- (gJ Rh